Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Dynasty Warriors 7 Empires (Japanese Demo Impressions)

Being a big fan of Koei's -Warriors games, you had to know I would be looking forward to trying this. I was hoping that it wouldn't be too hard to figure out, since it isn't in English (yet?). I can read enough Japanese to muddle through most of the menus, but some of them were way beyond me. It took me a bit to figure out English is written on the back of the menu icons, so that should help people with even less skill at the Japanese language than myself.

The menu starts on character edit, which is perfect since that's what I wanted to try first. There are lots of options to make a character, but I still wanted more. If more are purchasable/ unlockable in game, I would be very happy. If more were released as DLC...I'd be less happy, but I might still bite on them. I ended up making my character look like Miles Edgeworth from the Phoenix Wright games, and named him "Edgey". You can change the character input to the English alphabet, so I actually named him that, not just an approximation. I also tried to give him posh-looking robes to match his personality, since I couldn't get 'the ruffles' his suit is so famous for.

I fiddled with the stats, but wasn't sure what I set the growth type as. At least it seemed like the growth type, but since it's a demo, it's not as important. Next was picking a primary weapon type. After looking through them all, I decided to try new ones, since I know what most of the others are like. First up was the rapier with a dagger on a wire attached. It was ok, I just seemed to drop the combos a lot. Next up was a giant ring blade (which my buddy DTJAAAAM informs me is Ding Feng's new weapon) and it was ok, but didn't seem that good compared to the numerous others offered. Third was a pool cue...which I think I tried in Warriors Orochi 3, I can't remember. It was gimmicky since you could get multiple balls and it would make the attacks stronger/better. It's ok, but not one I would be itching to use. Last one I tried was....a canoe. Seriously, it was a canoe. My friend tells me it's Huang Gai's new weapon...and surprisingly, it rocks. Several charge moves throw out a big wave and then ride it, meaning big areas of damage. It was also stronger than I thought it would be, and hit big groups, so it's really good. It looks ridiculous, but I'm probably going to put it on a character I make. Seriously.

The hardest part of the demo was figuring out how to actually enter a battle. When on the edit character select screen, press the Square Button and you can do the mock battle to try them out. Sadly, I failed this mission the first time, since I wasn't paying attention to the time limit. Good musous will help you kill the officers, but you have to know lots of kanji to figure out what each is without using it. I just randomly assigned two each time. When the NA version releases in a month or so, it will be much easier. It's harder for me to play those games with Japanese dialogue, but I'll easily live with it if it means we get the game. I'm hoping to review it too, so here's hoping Koei helps me out!